I do not think anyone disagrees that the six-to-ten-year-old demographic liked Ewoks. It is generally people who were in that demographic when VI was released who speak fondly of the movie and think it is as good or better than the previous two.
Ernest Goes to Camp was successful enough at the box office to spawn four theatrical sequels (and many direct-to-video). I have yet to meet an adult who has made an argument that it is a great film.
HEY! Jim Varney’s Ernest films were a cinematic JEWEL, easily equivalent to… no, no, I can’t. I just can’t…
Thing is, it was the exact same demographic that loved “Star Wars” when it first appeared, and made it a monster hit … but they aged; by the time Return of the Jedi arrived, someone who was 10 when Star Wars was first released was now 16, and more likely to balk at Ewoks.
In short, the original audience aged, but the target demographic didn’t.
Here is why ewoks suck,
Bad Assed little Fucking Bear People who will Happily Eat a Muther Fucker,
but are also cute and slapstick as hell, they constantly run into each other, drop things and generally kill shit on accident.
It would be funny if you replaced them with ninjas, as it is Cute/Badass do not mix well in this movie at all. Its the same dumbassed thinking that put the dwarves/Smaug scene in the Hobbit where it turns the big evil nasty MOST POWERFUL DRAGON EVER into a total slapstick joke.
Directors who do this, do they even realize what effect this has?
That is not quite it. The first two films just had a broader demographic. They had an appeal to kids, but did not pander to them. Just look at how Yoda was handled in the TESB. He was a muppet who could have been Fozzie-Bear-annoying, but instead was a very balanced and nuanced character–humorous and comical some of the time, wise and witty most of the time, dark and ominous at the needed times. It was a character that worked for all ages.
I do think, though, that it is part of the reason. I remember kids who were of just the right age to be obsessively excited about Star Wars when it first came out … by the time that Return of the Jedi appeared, they were six years older, and naturally, the same things did not excite them as much. To recapture the same audience, they would have had to make he series grow more “adult” as the audience aged. That didn’t happen.
Sure, some of the characters were nuanced - but some were not (CP3O was, basically, a comic cowardly bultler throughout). The series was a space opera based on the oldtime serials, and it was aimed, mostly, at kids. Where it blew everyone away was in its epic look and sound, not it the ‘adult-ness’ of its plot or characters (in that respect, it was a standard fairy tale with a princess, mysterous knights, and, of course, swords).
I hope one of them is named Archie Andrews, just to fuck with fans’ minds.
Admittedly, it’s been a while since I was a kid, but I’m still trying to figure out why I’d want to be Kylo Ren for Halloween when I still don’t have any idea who he is or what he does.
Just like I feel sorry for any kid who jumped too soon and bought a Jar Jar Binks costume…
Years ago, around the time Phantom Menace came out, some TV network held a big contest for fan made short films. The big noise was that George Lucas himself would judge the winner.
George picked “Christmas Tauntauns,” a little cartoon about a little girl who wants lots of Star Wars toys.
That told me something right there.
It shows the master stroke of merchandising/marketing genius that was built into Star Wars that any male grade schooler in 1980 would be able to identify the bounty hunters Darth Vader brings aboard the Executor without any of them being identified within the movie and only Boba Fett having any lines of dialogue.
Not sure I agree with that… although I would agree that it’s totally true NOW…
The problem with Easy Rider is that some of the production sucked.
There were other movies from the sixties that didn’t have the flaws that ER had.
That being said, I love the movie. There is still much good, and much fantastic production. It’s just that the flaws in it are so dated.